Tuesday, October 12, 2010

It's one thing to not be aware that your literary friends are, in fact, a coterie. It's something different, however, to start self-consciously thinking of your literary friends as though they were a coterie. This latter procedure can produce some useful and principled results. See, for instance, the "coda" to A Tonalist, by Laura Moriarty, where she makes a good case for interpellating friends and strangers into a "movement" she's thought up - one that is especially a Bay-Area phenomenon. A Tonalist values the contingent (not nec. continent) and fictional nature of coteries, one gathers. I'd sign on, but I can't, and it would defeat the point anyway.